Like Ants
by Sifl-senpai
Summary: Gohan is the strongest there is, but he won't dare show it- not even to his own father. (A one-shot in which Cell is still defeated, but Goku did not die.)


**Author's Notes:**

 **So, this was the precursor to _Heavy_. And its title, _Like Ants_ , should give you some abstract insight to why _Heavy_ is called _Heavy_. I had posted it only on Ao3 originally, but figured I should post it here, too. For those of you that read the other, a lot of the themes expressed here are echoed and expanded upon in _Heavy_ , so please check that out of you like this.**

 **Thank you so much to all of you who read this, and even more to those of you who review! It literally makes my day. I love talking to all of you!**

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Gohan shied to the left and right from his father's swift, impatient strikes like a tiny fish darting between a child's demanding fingers.

"You've got to fight back- be aggressive! It's okay- you won't hurt me," Goku was saying. "You don't have to be so scared of your own strength."

Gohan half-nodded and sent a fist beneath his father's guard. Not deep enough. Goku answered the paltry suggestion with greater aggression.

"You have all the skill, Gohan, so just put your all behind your attack!" Goku finished his flurry of fists with a dual strike at his son's torso. Gohan blocked, sent Goku's arms upward, and delivered a kneecap into his father's stomach. A strike against Goku's face freed Gohan to dance away on the wind.

Goku shook it off in no time and resumed his charge. "You HAD me there, Gohan! Stop backing off and finish the job!"

This time, the boy met his father blow for blow. Krillin and Piccolo watched, the first mesmerized and the other taciturn, as father and son shredded the valley grass beneath their feet and throttled the rocks around them into sand as their ki clashed in tandem with their blows.

The rhythmic beat of fist-on-fist continued until, suddenly, Gohan ducked and swiped his father's feet out from under him. Then, the boy helped Goku into the ground with a swift ball of golden ki.

Eager for more punishment, the defender of Earth rolled out of submission and back onto his feet. "Ruthless," Goku choked. "But that still doesn't finish the job! You obviously see past my guard, Gohan, so stop fooling around and fight me for real!" He closed the distance between himself and his son to keep the session going.

"He's getting fed up with this," Piccolo muttered.

"Huh?" Krillin tore himself away from watching the Son family's brutal ask-and-reply onslaught. "You mean Goku?"

Piccolo's face remained solemn. "Well, both of them, but I had been referring to Gohan."

Krillin craned his face forward and squinted to try and read Gohan's expression more clearly. The sun glinted off of his bald, marked head as he shook it from side to side. He looked like a buoy pulled to and fro by an ocean current. "Gohan looks just as on edge to me as he does _whenever_ he fights. Goku is the only one who looks impatient. He wants Gohan to make this a real challenge and it just isn't happening."

"Gohan is tired of humoring the fight."

"Humoring?" Asked Krillin. "He looks like he is trying to run away from it."

Piccolo unblinkingly watched Gohan derail his father's advance several more times before Goku shouted something and changed from tangerine and ebony to golden white.

Gohan let his father's gilded charge glance his purple gi and then shot another ball of energy towards his assailant's back. Goku whirled around and thrust his fist through the glowing ball, aiming back towards its point of origin. Unfazed, Gohan redirected the oncoming blow with the back of his forearm and disabled his father's other arm with a firm hand. They struggled like that until Gohan's base strength failed him and his father sent him sprawling backwards into the dirt.

Gohan hid within the cloud of dust his impact created and only emerged when the wind blew the debris away in insistence. It then tried to drag the boy forward by his dark hair, but Gohan refused and pulled his bangs behind his head in rebuttal. He adopted a defiant stance and waited to defend against Goku's next wave of attack.

"Gohan needs to transform," Krillin said. "He doesn't have the raw strength to contend with Goku unless he does."

Piccolo sneered, but Krillin couldn't say who it was directed at. "That isn't the point."

"What?"

Goku's screams heralded his next advance. He knocked away his son's defenses with a Midas touch, but Gohan's coloring remained as common as it had been a moment ago. Now, with both arms neutralized, the boy slammed his skull into his father's in retaliation.

Goku pushed back. "Be serious!"

Once more, Gohan went low for his father's legs, but only mercy could have fooled Goku twice. He caught his son with a swift knee to the boy's side. Gohan yelped and used his momentum to help him retreat out of his father's reach.

Goku pursued him.

"Gohan is still afraid to transform?" Krillin asked.

Piccolo looked at Krillin, expressionless.

He furrowed his brows. "What?"

Piccolo turned back to the fight.

Goku sent a volley of golden ki pearls towards his son and Gohan dodged between them, sending his own feelings back to his father in resplendent shades of white and blue. The golden warrior sent them to the sides with the back of his hands as if brushing off dander from his shoulders. One of the deflected ki shards exploded in the ground near Krillin's feet.

"Hey! Mind the peanut gallery!" Krillin shouted. "You'd think he was trying to blow us to smithereens," he muttered.

"He's having a fight with his son. He may not want spectators." Piccolo crossed his arms and legs and sat above the ground.

Krillin shook the bag of beans grasped in his fist. "They were fighting? I didn't notice." When Piccolo did nothing, Krillin changed his approach. "If Goku didn't want us here, why did he ask us to come be on Senzu duty today?"

At that, Piccolo trained a pupil on him. "He thought he could make Gohan actually fight him this time. Now he knows he can't. Nobody likes other people watching while they scold their children."

"That sounds ominous."

Piccolo shrugged.

Goku screamed in frustration and chased his son into the air.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

When Goku was little- older than Gohan, smaller than Vegeta- King Piccolo had faced him while the spectators of Earth had peered up at them like ants. The King had sneered at the boy and insulted the little people behind him.

"Say what you want, but I won't let you hurt them," Goku had told him.

"Little runt, when you fall, you won't be able to stop me," The King had laughed.

"I won't fall," Goku looked at the King through the light of the sun shining in his eyes and met its brightness in determination and arrogance. There were no doubts in his heart- they had not even entered his mind. "I won't fall, and then you can't crush them."

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Gohan misdirected his father's airborne onslaught by diving into a giant bank of clouds and dotting it with pearls of energy that mimicked the boy's own ki signature. Goku barrelled after the bait while his son weaved around and out of his father's sight from within the cover. The two of them blended their energies together in the clouds until neither Krillin nor Piccolo could make heads or tails of their whereabouts.

Gohan emerged first, winded and alone, from the white. His respite did not last long, however, as Goku shot out of the clouds before his son could catch his breath. Exasperated, Gohan summoned his remaining latent energy decoys out of the clouds and after his father in the hopes of deterring the man.

Goku let the sparks of blue wash over him like water off a duck's wing and snarled in frustration as Gohan shrouded himself in the blanched sky once again. Again, Goku clawed his way into the clouds to ruin his son's escape.

The faded silhouettes of father and son- one taller and demanding, the other smaller and resilient- created flashes of lightning whenever they clashed.

Eventually, the force of Goku and Gohan's conflict broke the water in the clouds apart and the sky opened upon Krillin and Piccolo below.

"Shit," said Krillin.

Piccolo didn't hear him over the memory of Gohan, age seven, explaining how clouds work and why they disappear after the rain, and why it was fascinating, and how much he liked science, and since Piccolo was part plant, did he like the rain and could he absorb it straight into his skin?

The clouds burned into two pieces as an enraged light bit out their center. Goku reminded Krillin of the paintings of Fudo Myo-o he had seen in the neighboring temples of his youth.

Deep inside, Krillin had often wondered if he had indeed been serving a god his whole life and hadn't realized it until now, but the thought of his best friend as a holy avatar was too frightening to dwell on. He watched as Goku deftly handled Gohan's retreating defenses and sent the boy plummeting to the soaked ground. Krillin's hand tightened around the throat of the Senzu bean bag and he took a step towards the conflict.

"Don't," Piccolo warned.

Krillin pursed his lips and then finally sat into the sky, legs crossed, in a pose that mimicked Piccolo's, and tried to ignore the rain.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Gohan was a horrible choice of protege, Piccolo realized, and Piccolo himself was a horrible teacher.

They were out in the nothingness of the uncivilized world where the woods met the desert, and Gohan refused to train in combat.

"Why, child?! I will kill you if you do not put up any effort to stop my next attack!" Piccolo wasn't sure whether his outburst was a threat or a statement of fact, but he felt confident in its validity regardless.

Gohan kept looking at the ground. "There are ants here," he finally said.

"Do ants inhibit your ability to fight?!" Piccolo raged.

"I don't want them to get squashed," the boy said.

Piccolo pressed his palm forward and gathered his ki into it. "Then I will burn them since you will not do as I say."

Gohan's tiny form grasped Piccolo's outstretched arm and clawed at it. "Please no, mister Piccolo! I'll fight! I'll fight! I'll do it! Just don't make me fight where the ants might get squished while I do it!"

Piccolo looked at him. "Ants are beneath you," he sneered. "Animals die every day. You _know_ that. Why concern yourself with the natural progression of their life?"

"But I don't NEED to kill them! They aren't hurting me, and they aren't hurting you!"

"If it bothers you that much, then just win and keep me from killing them," Piccolo grunted. "It does not do to have you beg like a pathetic worm."

Gohan yelped. "But what if I mess up? But what if I break the rock near them by accident and it squishes them?" He grasped Piccolo's arm tighter. "Please, mister Piccolo!"

Gohan's squalling normally annoyed Piccolo, but now he was struck by how markedly unlike Goku the child was. "You cast away all of your pride and cry for the lives of these insects," Piccolo chided.

"Their life is more important than that," Gohan said, calming down enough to use his startlingly developed vocabulary. "Their life is more important, and risking it when you don't have to is arrogant."

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Goku ground his son into the fresh mud with his elbow. Piccolo's sensitive ears could pick up Gohan's distressed cries and Krillin could see them coming before they left the boy's lips. The two fighters scuffled in the ground until Gohan finally escaped his father's grasp.

"Gohan! Change, now!" Goku's impatience rang out across the valley as he pursued his son. He reached out and snagged Gohan's collar, jerking the boy backwards and sending a fist into the small of his back. The mud on Gohan's gi flew off where Goku's blow landed as if in a frenzied bid to flee from the conflict. "Don't turn your back on your opponent!"

Desperate, Gohan flipped above his father and sent a kick to where Goku's skull met his spine. When Goku jerked forward, Gohan continued with a blur of strikes into his father's back and shoulders. His hands and arms moved like pistons in an engine that was about to blow, and shed the mud slathered across the boy's upper body. Suddenly, Gohan stopped his mechanical rhythm and brought both hands above his head. He clutched them together and brought them both down upon his father to send the man back to the earth.

Goku deftly moved out of the way of Gohan's final strike and turned to face him head-on. "Are you tryin' to mock me?" Goku barked, flipping his son around and neatly pinning his arms. He pushed Gohan through the air and against the ground. The boy was too tired to properly break out of the hold.

Goku, frustrated, released his exhausted child. He was too angry to calm down the green fury in his eyes and instead began pacing like an animal kept in a cage too long.

"We have been at this for weeks! What do I have to do, Gohan? What do I have to do to make you understand that you don't have to be so afraid to give it your all? What do I have to do to make you understand that you won't hurt me? What do I have to do," he gesticulated as if to strangle the air and then buried his hands in his face, "to make you understand that once I die- for real, _forever_ , that you will be the new protector of Earth- the new strongest being that the universe comes to test?" Goku turned to face his son. "I want you to be prepared for that," he finished.

Gohan moaned. "You just want a fight."

Across the valley, Piccolo jolted from his meditative pose and rushed to where Gohan lay. Krillin, bewildered, followed behind.

Goku looked like he'd just been slapped. His hair bristled lighter, like a piece of metal so hot it turned white. Then, his rage disintegrated into black ash.

Gohan coughed and stayed down in the mud.

Krillin approached the scene and fiddled with the bean bag, but Piccolo, who had heard the entire exchange, held him back.

Krillin shot the Namek a look but otherwise didn't question the restraint.

Goku did not know what to say. He moved to reach out for his son, but fell short and put his hands on his hips.

Gohan slowly sat up and propped his torso up with his arms. "You almost died," he finally said, "when Cell tried to blow up. But then Trunks realized his plan and had Krillin cut him in half to remove the gas he was building up inside himself before he ignited it with ki. Then we disintegrated what was left. Kienzan saved us. Krillin saved us," Gohan said, nodding in his direction. "I was just a monster," the boy whispered.

Goku turned and shook his head at his son. "Gohan, we all become upset. And pushing your power like that, it makes us become angrier. You know that. You just have to learn to control it."

Gohan watched the sky as the last of the rain fell. "I was so arrogant I did not even think to move the fight away from you, or Krillin, or even Mister Satan and his television crew. I did not even question that they might be collateral, or that _I_ might pose the greatest threat to their safety."

Goku frowned deeper.

"You want to fight _that_ person. I do not want to be that person. I will not be that person ever again- not for you, not for anyone." Gohan looked at his father. "I am sorry."

Piccolo measured Goku's expression while the man kicked at the mud around his boots. After a few seconds, the two of them locked eyes.

Goku remembered Piccolo's words at the Cell Games and sheepishly looked back to the ground. "No, Gohan, I should be sorry. I thought if it was just ME that you were up against, it would be a fun challenge rather than a life-or-death situation."

Gohan looked at his father squarely in the eye. "If you somehow managed to make me fight you like I fought Cell, I would kill you."

No pride, no pretenses. It was a statement of cold, hard, uncomfortable fact. Against Gohan, they could all be crushed like ants.

Krillin shivered. He hadn't thought about it at the time, but he felt extremely fortunate that Gohan's anger had been so clearly directed at Cell. He remembered the first time he witnessed Goku transform under the influence of the full moon. The taste of fear and horror in his mouth from then and now was the same.

Piccolo also remembered the feeling of a furry tail between his fingers and the relief that had washed over him when he had made the moon crumble out of the sky.

Goku just nodded and scooped his son up out of the mud. Gohan, eleven, protested at first, but found that he did not have the strength to do anything more.

The boy started to cry. "I am sorry," he repeated, burying his head into his father's chest. "I am so sorry."

Goku gestured for Krillin, and the shorter man stepped in with the Senzu beans. He fed Gohan one and backed away. Goku nodded and smiled at his best friend, and then engaged Piccolo with his eyes.

After what felt like years to Krillin, Piccolo broke eye contact and turned away. Krillin took that as his cue to leave, too. He placed the bag of Senzu beans in Gohan's hands and followed his green ally.

"I think I can walk now," Gohan told his father.

"I know," said Goku, but he didn't put his son down until Chi Chi scolded them both for being covered in mud and late for dinner.


End file.
